Second Sight
by MixedBerry
Summary: The Doctor spends some time pondering "love at first sight".


Disclaimer: Of course I don't own Dr. Who or any of its characters. 

Spoilers: Very small ones for "The Doctor Dances"

Authors note: This has been brewing in my mind from something Christopher Eccleston said about love at first sight, and a firm conviction that the relationship between the Doctor and Rose is love, but not necessarily in the way we humans see love.

This is my first fanfic ever, anywhere. I've just had it in my head and had to write it. Hope it's readable :)

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The sound of a trainer heel banging against a chair leg filled the control room as he watched her from the corner of his eye. She had her nose buried in some scandal rag they'd picked up on 28th century Earth, and every once in a while she'd look up to ask him who the "Grand Maxor of East Kensington" was, or how a pop star could keep making records 200 years after her death, but mostly there was just the sound of her trainer banging against a chair leg. 

He continued to fiddle with a piece of equipment that looked like a cross between a bicycle pump and a calculator, but his attention was on the blonde head bent over the colorful paper. It still amazed him that after all that had happened, all he had done, the universe had seen fit to present him with Rose.

She didn't understand, couldn't understand (at least he didn't see how) what observing the universe through her eyes had done to him. He realized now that, consciously or otherwise, he'd fed her his pain in bite-size pieces, on a scale that a human might be able to fathom, in ways that she could escape from, back away from safely. He'd lost his world so he showed her the end of hers. He was the last of his kind, and he let her be the last of hers, just for a few minutes. He'd fought so hard against the urge to go back and save his people. He took her to a place where she'd feel the pain of knowing that someone she loved had to die so that everyone else could live. Had he done it intentionally? To be honest, he wasn't sure.

And yet there she sat, snapping chewing gum and reading a trash mag. The word "companion" had never seemed more fitting. She looked up at him, caught him watching her and smiled before bending her head back to her reading.

_"You just assume I don't..."_

_"What?"_

_"You just assume I don't..." he hesitated for what felt like forever and was only a second or two "...dance."_

How could he explain to her, this love at first sight, this thing he didn't understand himself? Oh, not the crazy ape-love humans were always blathering on about. Not clawing at clothes and snogging in secret corners. This thing that defied description, that just...was. The rightness of holding her hand, the way he knew she understood him when really she oughtn't to have any clue, the way she didn't push him to talk about his people and his world like he knew any other typically nosy human would do.

He didn't know what place he had in her life, and he didn't know what place he wanted. He just knew that he wished she'd stop picking up pretty boys and swooning over them. He just knew there was an irrational burning in his chest when he thought about her falling in love with one of them and leaving him.

_"Why is it always the great looking ones that do that?"_

_"I'm making an effort not to be insulted."_

_"I mean...men."_

Of course, she didn't think of him as a man. He wasn't one in the strictest sense of the word, he supposed. But in her mind it wasn't even a consideration. He swallowed, feeling a strange lump forming in his throat.

"'Hey, what's a 'Gold Banger Party' when it's at home?"

He jumped across the console and grabbed the paper from her hands, eliciting an affronted yelp from her. She made a grab for the paper but he held it away as he scanned the article. He then deftly wadded the paper up and pitched it through the nearest doorway.

"What'd you do that for?"

He grinned, the grin that was sometimes a mask but for her nearly always genuine. "Some things are best left alone by little Earth girls."

"You bought the stupid thing!"

He looked over at her, hands on her hips, so...human in her stance, and smiled broadly. Whatever this thing was, no pretty flyboy was going to stand in the way of it. Nobody in the universe was going to stand in the way.

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Please review if you'd like :) Good or bad, I don't mind. 


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